Friday, December 12, 2008

Friday, Finally

Finally, it's Friday. Not that I get any downtime over the weekend, but it will be nice to be able to start a home project without thinking "can I get this done before midnight so I can get some sleep?"

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My Christmas shopping is about 95% finished. I need to get a few things for Maddy's stocking, but otherwise, DUNZO. Now, to wrap them all. Gah.

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I'm making my Christmas dinner menu and shopping list. Are three kinds of potatoes too many? I usually make mashed, sweet and hash brown casserole. It just seems like a starch overload. I don't eat sweet potatoes, bleck. Although I did recently try sweet potato fries - now those were yummy!

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Craig has asked that I make Christmas cookies this year. Sugar cookies. With frosting. I've never made the kind that you refrigerate, then roll out and cut into shapes. My sugar cookie experience is limited to slice and bake with a squirt of tube icing. I'm a little intimadated by the process.

To facilitate his request, I suggested he get me this Kitchen Aid mixer as an early Christmas present. Something tells me it's a long shot.

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We're supposed to have an ice storm beginning late Sunday night/early Monday morning. If you live in the metro STL area, please proceed to your nearest grocery store and stock up on eggs, bread, and milk. Apparently when bad weather hits, we need french toast.

11 comments:

I LOVE my kitchen aide mixer!!!LOVE IT!! I got it as a wedding present from my Mom in Law, so if Craig doesn't pony up, put it on the wedding registry. Oh and did I mention I LOVE my mixer!! You gotta get one!

I think it is totally fair to request the Artisan as a prerequisite to cookie baking.

I will admit here (but not to her) that I bought my wife an Artisan, and I was just as excited about it. If she knew how much I wanted one, would it diminish the gift?

Also, the best sugar cookies are from the Betty Crocker cookbook and have almond extract in them. 50 years ago they were called "Mary's Sugar Cookies", then changed to "Delux (sic) Sugar Cookies" and finally just "Sugar Cookies." I haven't looked in the latest one to see if the recipe is still the same.

I don't have a kitchen aide but the one I have works fine for me. The most important thing about the sugar cookies is to make sure your dough is well-chilled or your cookies will spead and look like giant blobs.

Good luck with that ice storm. It will probably come our way soon too.

I just did a ton of Christmas sugar cookies last night, and Gregg, in my opinion, is right. The almond extract makes the cookies! You don't have to stick the dough in the fridge for 3 hours, though... I usually make the dough first, stick it in to cool while I make something else or just clean up around myself, and then pull it out!

We Tennesseans love French Toast too, apparently! It always cracks me up when bad weather is approaching, that is all people buy. Do they already have enough other types of food in their house to survive a nuclear war or something? I'm thinking, "If you are going to be stuck in your house for a long time, don't you need toilet paper?" But, hey, that's just me, I guess. ha.ha. It especially gives me a good laugh that people go stock-up crazy in our neighborhood, when we live less than a mile from the grocery store. We could WALK if the weather is that bad to at least a dozen restaurants too! People are such funny creatures. :)